chrisdicko Posted March 24, 2004 Report Share Posted March 24, 2004 I know it doesnt make any difference with Windows, but does installing linux on a laptop compared to a desktop make any difference at all? Just im having trouble installing linux for no reason really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland Posted March 24, 2004 Report Share Posted March 24, 2004 Hi, I've never installed Linux on a laptop but I've heard more often of problems installing Linux on a laptop than in a Desktop. One reason is probably that a laptop is more likely to have stuff like wireless, pcmcia, winmodem, flat screen that are often a cause of trouble with Linux, at least as long as a driver is not made ( contrary to M$ Win, manufacturers generally don't provide drivers for Linux ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisdicko Posted March 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2004 hmmm, Is there anyway of fixing this do you know of? Thread here aswell if you can check it out. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylizard Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 There are big differences when trying to install Linux onto a laptop compared to a desktop machine. Power management - ACPI Synaptic Touch Pad Integrated Video (not all notebooks) LCD Monitors And several other things that I can not think of right now. Plus, Laptops tend to ship with dealer specific BIOSes and drivers which can make things difficult as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arthur Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 can a synaptic driver RPM be submitted to the contrib mirrors? I've installed mine from source, but an rpm would make things much simpler. it would just make modifications to XF86Config-4 and put the binary driver in the proper place. That would help all those who have tar.gz/bz2 phobia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ac_dispatcher Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 (edited) I got my HP ze5185 working (at least most of it) Check out others: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ When I was looking for a Laptop and found the ze5185 for a good price I first came home and did a google on it -- found this: http://badtux.org/home/eric/editorial/hplaptop.php and this http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~vonsrdmn/ze51...185/index.shtml So I knew it worked ok and I bought it. so far so good. Mandy 9.1 and 9.2 worked good on it. Point is : due your homework before you buy. Edited March 25, 2004 by ac_dispatcher Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 Since laptops are more integrated by design than desktop, it's hard to pick and choose your components. Anyway, it's harder to make your laptop working 100% in linux, if not impossible. However, if you are happy with 80-90% working, then it's possible to install linux to a laptop. I have to note that older laptops (P3-800 and below) seems to be more linux compatible than newer ones. Especially the so-called no-legacy laptops. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisdicko Posted March 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 Hmmm, so it maybe sounds that im not going to be able to install linux then :( ac_dispatcher, cheers for them links, im going to check them out today! Got THIS from the first link thought, and the guy has installed linux on the same laptop.....so i might be able to aswell. Is slackware 9.1 just a different version of linux? As would it be worth trying that instead on Mandrake do you think? (remember, total newbie here ;) ) Thanks a lot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 You will be able to get linux installed - just some of the hardwaremight be tricky. If someone installed slackware then you will be able to get Mandrake installed! Slackware is a different distribution of Linux and doesn't giove you all the tools that Mandrake does. Exactly what problems are you having? We may be able to give you some pointers here. Also - your hardware specs,: memory, graphics and sound etc... would be helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 I'd recommend downloading a couple of LIVE CD's (like PC Linux OS from the start page here) and knoppix from http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html These are Mandrake/RedHat and Debian based respectively. My laptop hates all Mandrake's but is happy with debian distro's. One thing to play at is the boot options. This is easy with a live CD,,,you set the options by hand (like knoppix cheatcodes) then try it. add acpi etc. If it locks up you power off (its not using the filesystem so no damage) and try different settings. This should give you a good idea of what will nad will not work under which settings. IF your happy, write down the stuff and do an install of the respective distro. Remember to set these boot options in lilo/grub etc. Then it should behave the same. If you do decide to do a HDD install don't do it with knoppix, if it works use kantonnix, a derivative which is made to install to the HDD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisdicko Posted March 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 Thanks for the reply guys! This is the spec: Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D 7830 Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2,80 GHz Cache L2 512 Kb Chipset Intel® 845 FSB 533 MHz 512 Mb DDR-SDRAM 333 MHz expandible until 2048 Mb in 2 DIMM slots 60 Gb Fujitsu MHT2060AT, ATA DISK drive 15,0" TFT-XGA 1024x768 Combo DVD +RW +R RW8160 Ati Mobility Radeon 9000 64 Mb DDR Vram Smart Link 56K, V.92 international modem Ethernet LAN 10 base-T/100 base-TX National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 Audio VT1612A Parallel port S-Video Firewire IEEE 1394 PS/2 TV Out 5 USB 2.0 ports And, a link to it HERE Ive been asking in the Installing Linux thread aswell about my problem if any of it might help......HERE Ive tried using the LiveCD, and everything runs smooth....well, except for the modem isnt recognised, but im sure that wouldnt be too hard to solve once/if i get Mandrake installed! The main problem is that when trying to install (using CD1 or 2), it gets to the screen where it says <Enter> to install, or F1 ........ and after pressing evter it just black screens, ansd nothing else happens! :( Any ideas what it could be? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 It's probably either a bug in the installer (which will either have a workaround - or be fixed soon...), or a bad download/cd burn Looking at the site with the guy who installed slackware - it doesn't look like there are any serious hardware issues. Especially since a live CD worked for you. Try re-burning or re downloading the ISOs. make sure you check the MD5Sums on the ISO images. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 OUCH.... You have a later model. mines the earlier amilo 'D' Which LIVE CD (official mandrake, PClinuxOS or knoppix ???) when you run the LIve CD (if its not knoppix) is the PCMCIA working. my problems seem to be based on the Mandrake PCMCIA support and it just locks up forever on it. Strangely knoppix/lindows/debian all run fine. I just gave up on mandrake for it becuase its too much hassle. When the OFFICIAL comes out for 10.0 I might try again.!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted March 25, 2004 Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 From your hardware, it seems that the only problematic thing is the modem (which is a winmodem), but even that is solvable as long as you go to http://www.smlink.com/main/index1.php?ln=en&main_id=32 to download the linux driver and compile it. Just make sure you have the development packages and the corresponding kernel-source rpms installed. However, for this kind of beast, I prefer the hard-disk installed PClinuxOS to Mandrake 9.2. Mandrake 9.2 takes much more work to install properly on laptops in my case than PClinuxOS. However, you probably need broadband to get the rest of the needed packages for PClinuxOS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisdicko Posted March 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2004 Cheers guys, much appreciated!! Im sure the ISO's are fine, as someone else has used them on another machine. Ive run MD5Sum on them, and there was no reported errors, so thats a bonus. The liveCD i used was the official madrake one. I didnt know there was any others really, lol. Also, how can i see if my PCMCIA is causing the problem? As i dont use it, and i cant disable it anyway to install linux on to. Are knoppix/lindows/debian just versions that run off the CD? as i suppose i could try another version really.....Also, the PClinuxOS can that be downloaded Dragon, i get what your saying, but how can i fix the driver issue (and kernals) if I cant actually get anywhere near installing mandrake? im new remember...so aint understanding this linux stuff ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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